CHILE: UNESCO designates old Chilean mining town as a World Heritage Site

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization officially named on Saturday (October 28) an old Chilean mining town as a World Heritage Site. Encrusted on the bare rock of the Andes, Sewell is a ghost town now. But in its glory days 15,000 miners who dug copper out of the mountain lived in this isolated, austere mining camp without cars or booze, under a constant threat of avalanches. Generations of miners built Sewell, the birthplace of big copper mining in Chile, into a cluster of colourful wooden buildings along dozens of heart-challenging stairways. One of the former miners said that although they are honoured by the World Heritage Site designation, the miners represent a deeper level of Sewell's history. "Sewell has been declared a UNESCO site but we who were born there, we who have lived all of our lives here, we are the human heritage. We represent all the efforts of thousands and thousands of people who have come here," said Eduardo Ibazeta. Yet others revelled in the UNESCO honour. "I, as a Sewellian, always hoped that there would be a recognition for this place, which is so beautiful, because it is unique. You are not going to find any other place equal to here," said a former Sewell resident, Mirta Morales. In 1905, American William Braden challenged geography to build a mining camp at 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) close to the opening of El Teniente, which is now the biggest underground copper mine in the world. Engineers built houses into the rock and carved out the mountain for a narrow-gauge railway covered with snow sheds, which was for years the only access for people and supplies. Sewell, 55 miles (90 km) south of Santiago, was the main camp for workers at El Teniente, which is still a producing mine now owned by the government miner Codelco. Since the end of the 1990s, Codelco has been working on preserving the city, reconstructing buildings and offering guided visits for tourists, including a visit into the huge underground mine to get a glimpse of work inside the mountain. A tourist agency works with Codelco to bring a small flow of visitors up the paved road that puts the town 90 minutes away from the nearest city, Rancagua. In its heyday, thousands of people lived and congregated in Sewell's tiny parks, navigating interminable series of steps. There were no roads. Now the only residents are caretakers who watch after the ghost town, whose brightly coloured houses break up the monotonous majesty of stark Cerro Negro mountain. UNESCO official Rosa Blanco said the people are the true soul of the town. "The importance of Sewell, I think is not only the buildings or having been a mine at such an altitude as incredible as this, but it is also the life, the testament of life of the people, which I believe is the richest - and this is interesting and should not be lost and should be transmitted to future generations. In this sense, there is one idea of rebuilding some buildings to show the form of life that they had here," she said. Visitors can still easily note the sharp distinction between the narrow workers' barracks and the relatively luxurious homes, clubs and schools for expatriates from the United States and elsewhere. Mine managers imposed segregation and an austerity meant to defuse social tensions and keep the mine producing smoothly. Other Chilean mining camps are famous for heavy drinking, but Sewell's social clubs operated under a strict dry law, enforced by the isolation. Frequent avalanches and rockslides and bitter winters, as well as accidents inside the mine, made Sewell dangerous. Sewell was not baptized until 10 years after it was founded when Barton Sewell, a top executive of the U.S. company that owned El Teniente, died in 1915 in New York. Sewell, who never set foot in Chile, bet everything on the mine, where he saw a long term potential that has come true. El Teniente still produces more than 400,000 tonnes of copper a year, one of the biggest mines in Chile's biggest industry. Copper is the backbone of Chile's economy and in the past year high world prices for the red metal have driven the country to its biggest economic expansion in seven years. El Teniente was nationalized between 1967 and 1971, and the government gradually migrated mine families to a safer, less expensive life in Rancagua, at the foot of the Andes. A lot of Sewell's buildings were later destroyed. What remains is the core of the camp as it was in about 1920. Two other Chilean architectural gems have already been designated world heritage sites: the old-town area of historic Valparaiso port and 19th-century wooden churches on Chiloe island.

ITN Source | October 29, 2006

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